Shipping capacity booming
With shipping capabilities more than doubling in the past three years, Dalian is now among China's top coastal cities.
Statistics showed by the end of 2006, Dalian accounted for some 90 percent of Liaoning Province's shipping construction output, with cargo vessels reaching 3.6 million tons and passenger capacity at 21,000 seats.
Among the types of ships manufactured in Dalian are Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC), container vessels, to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) transport ships.
The city's ocean-going passenger transport volume is the largest in China, with 2.84 million people a year.
The local government has encouraged shipping companies to build more large-sized vessels and standardize the type of ships that commute between the mainland and the islands.
Although the total number of ships has dropped by 156 as a result of these moves, the city's shipping capacity has soared. The age of the average ship has also dropped from 25 years, to only 10 years in 2006.
To further accelerate the development of the shipping sector, the city this year started to promote the development of vessel financing services.
With an investment of 1.08 billion yuan, eight shipping enterprises were establishment this year, adding 14 vessels with total deadweight of 338,000 tons.
Transport services between the mainland and islands have also been improved, boosting island economy. Eight passenger RoRo ships were launched in 2006 for mainland to island transport.
In Dalian, the shipping services, shipbuilding and ship-repairing industries are also booming.
Last year alone, 463 new companies involved in shipping-related businesses like international ship freight forwarding and vessel management opened, an increase of 47.9 percent over the previous year.
Ship agencies handled about 13,000 international vessels last year, with the amount of cargo forwarded growing by 36.6 percent.
Last year Dalian's shipbuilding capacity reached 2.35 million deadweight tonnage up from 1.2 million in 2003, and the industry's output value has hit 12.1 billion yuan, up from 6 billion yuan in 2003.
The output value of the ship-repairing industry has also jumped from 1 billion yuan in 2003 to the current 2.5 billion yuan. Dock-capacity has increased from 243,000 tons to 683,000 tons. A 300,000-ton floating dock, the largest of its kind in the world, has been constructed.
In the first six months this year, Dalian's ship-repairing industry recorded a total economic volume of 1.4 billion yuan, an annual growth of 12 percent.
During the same period, construction commenced on a "supermarket" of ship-related goods on Changxing Island, and 43 ship repair enterprises and 11 shipbuilding related enterprises were established. Now an emergency aid team, comprising of 22 ship repair enterprises, can provide repair and rescue services to ships from home and abroad around the clock.
Dalian has also boosted its abilities to train technicians. Its training base helped educate 1,000 new skilled workers and train 3,000 on-job workers.
(China Daily 09/07/2007 page41)
